This is a a very good and succinct summarization.
What I'm also observing recently also is that pretty much every product tries to expand to do things that completely different products used to do, and become a mega-product-for-everything. It's like a Zawinski's Law on steroids.
Then images.
Then videos.
Now there is games in it.
And you can follow users instead of communities now.
And instagram has videos.
And pinterest has videos.
And imgur has videos.
And youtube has games.
And tiktok has longer videos.
And twitter also added images, videos, and then longer posts.
And tumblr has added videos, then communities that you can follow instead of users.
It feels like if a social media survives long enough it just turns into facebook.
I'm not trying to buy a labyrinth.
One interesting care study is Posthog (I felt like it was a labyrinth; using your analogy) - primarily build in an age of LLMs, with a large investment and a large team behind it - it reached this stage:
> one player in a space gets huge, keeps adding features, loses sight of what makes them a good market fit
My first experience using their product (they had a generous free year for new startups) felt like exactly what the author describes. A collection of features.
I think it's just really hard to "not build a feature" and keep a product focused. Whether you're solo or a large team
and of course we have no long term plans and vision, cause we just jump on hype waves and if something is marketable we need to develop it ASAP without really thinking it through to get as much new users as possible...
I hate it here, the only reason why I haven't quit yet is I'm scared of finding a new job given the current state of job market.